This article is part of Football League World’s ‘Terrace Talk’ series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…

Preston North End have been a solid and consistent Championship club for the best part of eight years, and they are a club that is run to a tight budget and who rarely spend big lumps of cash on players.

For a club in the manner that the Lilywhites are, it is sometimes good to look towards the players of the future to give them a chance, but that is not really something that has happened in the 21st century.

Paul McKenna was an established first-teamer already for the entirety of the 2000s and Andy Lonergan also came through at that time, but academy graduates who have made an impact for PNE have been few-and-far between.

Ben Davies and Josh Earl in more recent times have been more successful than most, but since Ryan Lowe was appointed as manager last December, he has sought to utilise the youth a bit more.

Mikey O'Neill, Jacob Slater, Lewis Leigh and Finlay Cross-Adair have all made their professional debuts for the club either in league or cup competition in the last year, so the future is certainly looking bright.

There is though some skepticism from FLW's PNE fan pundit Sam Weeden, who believes that following the disastrous situation which saw Tyrhys Dolan released in 2020 before going on to sign for Blackburn Rovers, the hierarchy are now playing it safe with the youth players, who may not necessarily be good enough for Championship level in the end.

"There seems to be a lot of hype about the young lads coming through now," Sam said.

"You've got the likes of Finlay Cross-Adair who's been involved in the first-team, Adam O'Reilly who has gone out and played games, then there's Josh Seary, Lewis Coulton, Dana Amaral who has also gone out on loan recently, and Mikey O'Neill.

"But until they break into the first-team then there's not really a lot you can tell about it.

"I think the biggest issue I have with our academy is where these players are going on loan.

"They're going on loan to the fifth, six or maybe even seven and eighth tiers of English football and you look at other clubs like Middlesbrough who have Josh Coburn on loan in League One - if League One clubs aren't really taking our players, are they necessarily good enough? Or are we just trying to escape another Tyrhys Dolan situation?

"My theory is they've realised they made a mistake with Tyrhys and they're panicking now and giving everyone contracts to reach the first-team and maybe realise that they aren't actually good enough."

The Verdict

Despite their being some hype around PNE's latest crop of youngsters, perhaps Sam is right to be cautious.

The under-19's are mainly playing against clubs in Leagues One, Two and even National League sides, so it's not a great level to be judging them at, and being a category 3 academy does restrict them in certain ways.

The question has been asked by supporters in regards to potentially moving up to category 2, but that doesn't appear to be happening anytime soon, and because of that, the majority of PNE's youngsters will only get loan moves to the National League North and the Northern Premier League.

Aaron Bennett has bucked that trend with a switch to Altrincham in the fifth tier of English football and Mikey O'Neill was wanted by League Two Grimsby Town in the summer, so there is some anomalies, but we will only know in a couple of years time as to whether the current hype was deserved.